Longmont's oldest print shop closing doors

Advance Printing owner Ron Peters has owned it for the past 45 years

The "Original Heidelberg" press — as it's helpfully labeled — sits in the basement of Advance Printing, one of several antique presses the business still uses every day.

Employee Bill Hamilton loads printed paperboard into the machine and, using its "windmill feeder," the press grabs each sheet and places it into a die-cutting form where it is stamped into what will become — once folded — a small box made to hold a medicine bottle.

Watching the machine work through the stack of paperboard prompts Ron Peters, Advance Printing's owner, to offer a blunt comparison of its efficacy to digital presses, the marvels of the modern printing era.

Advance Printing owner Ron Peters stands next to an "Original Heidelberg" press, referred to in a 1981 article on the Amalgamated Printers' Association website as the "prince of presses." Such antique equipment is still in use in Peters' print shop. Peters announced this week that he has sold his building and will be retiring — albeit begrudgingly — at age 78 next month. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

"(A digital press) ain't nothing but a damn copy machine," Peters scoffs. "That's not a press. This is a press."

Given the tenure he's had running his print shop, Peters has earned the right to be — to put it mildly — skeptical of the latest technology.

He points to the "newest" piece of equipment he owns — a paper cutter, which he estimates he bought in 1994.

"I know how to delete emails," he said when asked about his computer usage. He grins and reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone.

"This damn thing, it's an old one, 10 or 12 years," he said. "I still don't know how to use it. Matter of fact, I was up at Walgreen's and the gal said, 'I've never seen one this old.'"

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Peters, who bought Advance Printing in 1969, a couple of years after the company was started, is packing it in after 45 years. He's sold his building and is hoping to sell as much of the equipment within as possible before he has to vacate it in mid-April.

"Oh, I've been talking about it for a long time," Peters said. "I just see the handwriting on the wall. You turn 78 and you're not getting any younger, you know?"

Bill Hamilton keeps an eye on Advance Printing's Heidelberg press this week as it stamps out paperboard that will be folded up into boxes to hold bottles of medicine. Owner Ron Peters, who's shutting down Advance next month, said of Hamilton, who's been working for him for more than 30 years, "They don't come any better than Bill." (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

Still in good health himself, Peters said it really was that last birthday that finally convinced him it was time to step away. That, and he's also been having to spend more time caring for his ailing wife, Rhoda, he said, and it was also an eye-opener when his younger brother died last year.

Giving up the business is going to be tough, Peters said. He got his first job in a print shop in 1951 at the Valentine (Neb.) Republican newspaper when he was a sophomore in high school.

He bought Advance Printing when it was in its original location at 945 Main St. and relocated it to its present location at 232 Main St. in 1972.

"I've got a lot of stuff to hopefully sell," Peters said. "There was an outfit that said they would come in and take it all away — pack it all up — for dimes on the dollar, that kind of thing."

He said he would be contacting all of the print shops in the region to let them know he is selling his presses and other supplies and equipment and hopefully arrange a little better financial payoff for himself.

On the upstairs level of his print shop is a foot-powered perforator that was first patented by the F.P. Rosback company in 1888, and it still works as well as it ever has, although Peters had to secure new teeth for it a few years ago.

Hand-set type cases loaded with letters are some of the printing equipment that Ron Peters hopes to sell when he closes Advance Printing next month after operating it for the past 45 years. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

But it's the basement of the shop that feels like you're walking into a museum — albeit a working one. On one wall are stacks and stacks of ink containers, and along another are boxes and boxes of various types of paper. Peters reaches into a drawer and pulls out a heavy copper mold — a mountain scene — that's used in a printing process called foil stamping.

He pulls out some large sheets of paper and fires up the Kelly No. 2, an automatic press built in the early 1920s. This behemoth is more than 10 feet long and is capable of printing on 22-by-34-inch sheets of paper at a rate of 2,500 sheets per hour.

"It doesn't have any electronic parts that can wear out," Peters said.

In what's now a closet — and used to be an old freight elevator in the 1910-built building — Peters shows off his collection of type cases holding drawers and drawers of letters.

"Everything we do in printing we used to do in lead type," he said. "I've set enough handset type to last a lifetime.

"You used to have to set every letter by hand, and now you just do it with the click of a button on the computer."

Despite all of the changes in his industry — first the move to offset printing, which took a lot of his printing business away, and then the shift to digital — Peters has maintained by taking on more specialty-type work, such as embossing, die cutting and foil stamping. For example, another printing company contracts him to do the die cutting for those medicine boxes.

But what used to be 15 employees is down to just three: Peters, his son Greg, who's now 57, and Bill Hamilton, who has worked for Peters since the late 1970s.

"They don't come any better than Bill," Peters says of his long-time employee.

And as for Greg, who's been working for his dad for about 30 years, what's he going to do once they have to vacate the building?

"It just depends what happens with the presses," he said. "If they sell we can't print anything. So that'll mostly determine my fate."

Peters was working in the financial services industry for five years before he went to work for his dad, and said he has enjoyed serving Advanced's customers all these years.

"That's always been my dad's motto — treat people the way you would want them to treat you," he said. "That's the way we've always done business here."

This Kelly No. 2 model automatic press was likely manufactured in the early 1920s but still works just fine, according to Advance Printing owner Ron Peters. Peters hopes to find a buyer for it and the other printing equipment in his shop, which is closing next month after 45-plus years. (Matthew Jonas / Longmont Times-Call)

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